© AlamyKarl Marx: time he went back on the syllabus?
Despite the crash, the high priests of economics refuse to look at the big picture - and continue to prop up world elitesRebellions aren't meant to kick off in lecture theatres - but I saw one last Thursday night. It was small and well-read and it minded its Ps & Qs, and I think I shall remember it for some time.
We'd gathered at Downing College, Cambridge, to discuss the economic crisis, although the quotidian misery of that topic seemed a world away from the honeyed quads and endowment plush of
this place.
Equally incongruous were the speakers. The Cambridge economist
Victoria Bateman looked as if saturated fat wouldn't melt in her mouth, yet demolished her colleagues. They'd been stupidly cocky before the crash - remember the 2003 boast from Nobel prizewinner Robert Lucas that the "central problem of depression-prevention has been solved"? - and had learned no lessons since. Yet they remained the seers of choice for prime ministers and presidents. She ended: "If you want to hang anyone for the crisis, hang me - and my fellow economists."
What followed was angry agreement. On the night before the latest growth figures, no one in this 100-strong hall used the word "recovery" unless it was to be sarcastic. Instead, audience members - middle-aged, smartly dressed and doubtless sizably mortgaged - took it in turn to attack bankers, politicians and, yes, economists. They'd created the mess everyone else was paying for, yet they'd suffered no retribution.
Comment: Indeed, many countries are dumping their reliance on the US Dollar Reserve in favor of agreements struck in their own currencies. As confidence erodes, many of these foreign trade dollars will find their way back home - possibly sparking a brutal dollar hyperinflation. No new dollar creation is needed for this to happen.